Shortly after the publication of her 2003 poetry collection, The Brevity of Red (2003), Jill MacLean‘s nine-year-old grandson Stuart asked her to write him a book with hockey and Skidoos in it. The result was The Nine Lives of Travis Keating (2008) which won the 2009 Ann Connor Brimer Award, was shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children, 2010 Hackmatack, Silver Birch and Diamond Willow Awards, and was a KIND Children’s Honorable Mention Book for the Humane Society of the United States. Its 2009 sequel, The Present Tense of Prinny Murphy, won the 2010 Ann Connor Brimer Award. Both books are set in Newfoundland, where Jill’s family lived for eighteen years.Jill now makes her home in Nova Scotia, which is the setting for her third novel. Always an avid reader, she is delighted to rediscover the world of children’s literature. In her free time she gardens, canoes and hikes.